Reading pictures

India's coffee table books have more universal appeal than ever before.

Picture this: hot black coffee in a large coffee mug, sheets of rain on the windowpane, or maybe it's a bright day, and sunbeams are filtering into the room.

A large cushioned sofa, some soft music and a big book in your hand whose photographs spark your imagination. You flip through the pages, which sometimes let tranquillity seep in, sometimes spark off a thought or bring on a dream.

The coffee-table book's leisurely charm draws connoisseurs, travellers and art lovers equally, for they are unable to resist the seductions of the oversized book of elaborate design and display.

Raavi Sabharwal of Timeless, The Art Book Studio will tell you, "In a coffee-table book, you read pictures." Sabharwal's sprawling art bookstore is aesthetically strewn with coffee-table and illustrated books. Like a boy trapped in an old-world time zone, he scoffs at television, which he says leaves nothing to the imagination.

In the good old days, a still photograph of a tiger attacking its prey left many spellbound, with the pre- and post-action fabricated by the viewer's imagination. "It's the stills in a book that move people," sums up Sabharwal.

With over 200 coffee-table books to his credit, Sabharwal also claims that his Panorama of India, a limited 1,000 prints edition, pegged at Rs 24,000 a copy, is the most expensive book ever published in India.

In fact, some of the most expensive coffee-table books available in India will have a Sabharwal hand in them, for instance, Ladakh (Rs 12,000) or "Jar" (Rs 17,000). The 1982 coffee-table book Curry And Rice On 40 Plates, limited edition, has, according to Sabharwal, seen a whopping escalation "" Rs 375 in 1982 to a current value of Rs 18,000.

He quips, "I am a photographer's dream publisher as I am stupid. I get carried away by the concept, not bothering about costs and revenues."

What makes the perfect coffee-table book? "Subject rules," echo Sabharwal and Pramod Kapoor of Roli Books, who says that you need "a good mixture of excellent photos, text and quality production". Also, the size of the book should do the subject justice, feels Sabharwal.

At times, cost-cutting can lead to a reduction in the book's size, which can mar the beauty of the subject as well as the overall look of the book.

Roli Books, in fact, has coffee-table books starting as low as Rs 225, although these are not hard cover. "Expensive is very relative," says Kapoor who explains that publishing for the international market, which has a good buyer base, helps to reduce costs of coffee-table books and keeps them in print.

The Unforgettable Maharajas "" 150 Years Of Photography by Roli Books, pegged at Rs 3,500, according to Kapoor matches the quality of high-end books worth Rs 10,000, but Roli's large buyer base helps in keeping the price down.

The publishers have different opinions about the popularity of coffee-table books. Sabharwal sees sales as having dropped over the last 6-7 years, with mostly foreigners and diplomats buying them.

"Coffee-table books have a high risk element with less margins on profit," he says. On the other hand, Kapoor sees demand as constant, and now he thinks it is even expanding to individuals, not just limited to corporates or diplomats.

Though a large number of coffee-table books published in India capture its landscape, cities, culture, architecture, food and history, making them a delight for tourists to take home, lately some bizarre and unconventional subjects too have found their way to the coffee table.

One could check on Bizarre Stories of the World, Very Important Pets (that is, pets of famous personalities) by Roli Books, Trees of India, Marwari Horses by Timeless, or some on art or artists such as Satish Gujral: An Artography. In a way, some coffee-table books published in India are gradually moving towards more global subjects.

A coffee-table book connoisseur will usually find his art books in the range of Rs 3,000-5,000. And, like any other passionate collector, he will examine the editorial and publishing quality with a keen eye. A hardly visible printing mistake or a book jacket with a visible scratch is enough for most collectors to dismiss its inclusion in their collection.